laptop Advice on purchasing a new laptop

[darkeshrine]

Just a little bit of background, I haven't bought a laptop in 13 years. I keep looking, never finding anything worth buying at my price point, and giving up. My last laptop had issues immediately. The manufacturer was nice enough to send someone out to fix it, but they just made it worse by causing damage that they refused to cover. I couldn't buy a replacement at the time, and just haven't since then. 

 

My most recent round of shopping hasn't been leading me anywhere fun. My price point is <$300 usd, but I don't want trash. I spent 4 years working retail selling cheap junk. I don't need a gaming laptop. The absolute most intensive thing I plan on using it for is maybe 3d rendering for D&D Miniatures, but it'll mostly be used for pdf's, documents, and a little bit of web searching when I go on vacation or house sitting for family.

 

I did find the HP 14-fq0033dx on sale for $250 usd, but It has a few problems for me. First is the processor is a Ryzen 3 3250U which is pretty not great. The Ryzen 3 2600G I just pulled out of my pc is quite a bit better in almost every regard. I know the difference between processors designed for desktop versus mobile devices, but I want something I can't buy a better version of next year at the same price point. The second problem I have with it is the storage. It comes with a 128gb NVMe ssd which is pretty great and easily upgradable in the future, but just not big enough now and replacing it voids all of its warranties. That's it. The only problems I have with this machine, but to get a machine without these problems seems to range $500 usd or more. 

 

So, not asking for someone to go out and find me a better option, but rather "Is there a better option?" I've seen a bunch of sites that allow for customization or changes to a laptop, but all I've seen is ridiculous price hikes for negligible upgrades; like upgrading to a 500gb NVMe for $160 or more when I can buy one reliably for under a third of that. Does anyone know of a decent site to look at for a more customized choice within my ~$300 usd price point or should I just settle?

 

 

[Biohazard777]

1 hour ago, darkeshrine said:

My price point is <$300 usd, but I don't want trash.
So, not asking for someone to go out and find me a better option, but rather "Is there a better option?"

Nope for 300$ or less you can only purchase new e-waste / trash.
Used... maybe you can find something decent.
 

1 hour ago, darkeshrine said:

 I've seen a bunch of sites that allow for customization or changes to a laptop, but all I've seen is ridiculous price hikes for negligible upgrades; like upgrading to a 500gb NVMe for $160 or more when I can buy one reliably for under a third of that. Does anyone know of a decent site to look at for a more customized choice within my ~$300 usd price point or should I just settle?

Customized and budget... nope, extra labor to put the parts you want will just end up costing more.

EDIT:

1 hour ago, darkeshrine said:

but I want something I can't buy a better version of next year at the same price point

Do I need to point out how silly this part is? You gotta be trolling.

[darkeshrine]

1 hour ago, Biohazard777 said:

Nope for 300$ or less you can only purchase new e-waste / trash.
Used... maybe you can find something decent.
 

Customized and budget... nope, extra labor to put the parts you want will just end up costing more.

EDIT:

Do I need to point out how silly this part is? You gotta be trolling.

Not trolling, just phrasing something in a stupid way. The laptop I'm looking at now is the best I've seen at that price point in years, but it also did take just as long for NVMe drives to drop in price. It's just that everything else I'm seeing at this price point is emmc fueled e-waste that's designed to get your kid through a singular year of school and then be replaced. I just want to buy something I know can do what I need it to do for years without having to buy something needlessly over the top for so much more.

 

Edit: I've just spent enough years having to sell that e-waste that I don't want to buy it, but I also have a budget. I could drop a thousand on a laptop that'll do the job for the next ten years, but I really am not going to use it daily so I don't want to waste the money. 

[Biohazard777]

12 minutes ago, darkeshrine said:

I've just spent enough years having to sell that e-waste that I don't want to buy it, but I also have a budget. I could drop a thousand on a laptop that'll do the job for the next ten years, but I really am not going to use it daily so I don't want to waste the money. 

Yeah I know what you mean, but it looks to me like you've set your budget way too low for what you need / expect to get out of it.
Same thing as with other consumer electronics, let's take smartphones for example:

• 50-70$ = bottom of the barrel, e-waste the moment you bought it.
  ^ this is the same thing as 300$ laptop
• 100-150$ = entry level stuff, loooots of compromises in terms of HW (and SW), but can actually do most of the things you want a basic smartphone to do and will last more than 2 years.
  ^ this is the same thing as 500-600$ laptop

Also, expecting 10 years of service out of a laptop is IMO too big of an expectation. For light office work and browsing, maybe... but even just consuming media is gonna get difficult in that time-frame thanks to new video compression algorithms / codecs (for which you'd need new HW capable of decoding it efficiently, HW that wasn't around when the laptop was assembled). 5 years is IMO a lot more reasonable target to hit.

 

 

[darkeshrine]

While I could argue your point, cause I sold cellphones for 3 of the past 4 years, this isn't the thread for that. However, point taken. I'll probably just save some extra and see what I can get later. I haven't had a laptop in a decade, I can wait.

 

Any good websites and such to check for sales and such? I've mostly been checking major retailers and manufacturer's sites, but the manufacturer's sites are surprisingly just more expensive. I've seen a bunch of other sites, but I don't know which ones are reputable or trustworthy.

[Mikhail Ivanov]

Look, Biohazard777 absolutely right.

Here is few simple rules which helps you find decent laptop.

Pick your base and never compromise on it.

1. Display: i strongly recomend you buying 1080p 15.6-16" model, 720p is just miserable experience.

2. Storage: pick model with 256 Gb PCIe SSD (128 Gb bit too small for comfortable use in my opinion and you can almost always upgrade it later on when needed)

3. RAM: decide on how much ram you need (8 Gb is bare minimum, try to sqeez 16 Gb because alot of decent modern laptops does not have SODIMM slots for upgrade)

4. DO NOT buy budget laptop with descrete GPU. just DON'T, it is not worth it. spend as much mone on CPU.

fell free to add your own requirements here like LAN port or numerick keyboard in this list, things that actually matters for your use case.

Now when you have your base - time to pick CPU.

While base parameters define how happyou you will be while using your new machine(you don't want to spend money on product that will frustrate you on daily basis) the CPU define how long you will enjoy your journey with this laptop. Better CPU not only gives you better experience but in general more money you spend on CPU gives you more performance per $ spend on laptop because Chassis, screen, SSD and RAM you picked before is a fixed cost it will be for example $300 in laptop with Celeron and same $300 in Core i5 laptop.

1. Pick newest CPU awailable for your budget - i may be wrong but i think it is most important factor newer CPU in general have better performance, better power efficiency, better iGPU with better media decoders etc.

2. Familiorize yourself with benchmarking siltes like passmark which gives you data to calculate performance per $ spend

Let's try on newegg with 15.6" 1080p/16Gb RAM/256Gb SSD/Win 10-11 base starts from $481 

CPU Release Date              |  Model          |   PassMark Score | Price, $ | PassMark per $ | Etc

Q4 2020  12-28W  10nm     |  i3-1115G4   |  6237                     | $481     | 12,96               | 2 cores with HT, 41Whr battery, W10Pro (probably SATA SSD) Wi-Fi 5

Q4 2019  12-25W  10nm     |  i5-1035G7   |  8483                    | $567    |  14,96               | 4 cores with HT, 41Whr battery, W11Pro (probably SATA SSD) Wi-Fi 5

Q3 2020  12-28W  10nm     |  i5-1135G7   |  10047                  | $570     |  17,62               | 4 cores with HT, 41Whr battery, W11Pro (PCIe SSD) Wi-Fi 5

Q1 2021  10-25W   7nm      | R5-5500U    |  13149                  | $596     |  22,06               | 6 cores with HT, 41Whr battery, W10Pro (PCIe SSD) Wi-Fi 6

Q1 2021  10-25W    7nm     | R7-5700U    |  15889                  | $825     |  19,26               | 8 cores with HT, 45Whr battery, W10Pro (PCIe SSD) Wi-Fi 6

Let's compare your model with ^^^

14" 720P 8Gb RAM 128 SSD 2 HT cores and 3935 PassMark Score for $298 this is 13,2 PassMark score per $

for $183 more for i3 model you not only get better and bigger screen twice RAM and twice SSD but you get 60% more performance

for $298 more for R5-5500U with better screen storage and RAM you get 235% more performance and Wi-Fi 6 this is like 4 laptops for price of two.

HP fq0013dx  is defenition of E-Waste

Just save money if you can, wait for discounts or new CPU generations release like Ryzen 6600U whith 17804 PassMark score and MUCH better iGPU capable of casual gaming.

 

 

 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Mikhail Ivanov
added 14-fq0033dx info